The Lord Has Destroyed

Lamentations 2

We have discussed that it is difficult to read the book of Lamentations. It is not because the thoughts are too complicated. There is an emotional depth that is hard for us to delve into. However, we explained the first song last week as to why we need lamentations in our lives. We live in a world that consciously or unconsciously teaches us stoicism: hide your emotions, for they are embarrassing. One can show off intellect but not emotions.

You see Lamentations 2 still deals with the LORD’s anger. We do not teach that anger is an attribute of God. Indeed it is not. In fact, being slow to anger, as mentioned in Exodus, is one of the attributes of God. However, it does not mean that God cannot become angry. God can become angry because He is a holy God. We have to emphasize holiness here rather than wrath. In the seminar yesterday someone asked about the spirituality that is driven by fear. Are we not taught that we should scare non-christians of the punishment of hell? We can misunderstand this. It is not that because we do not believe in hell. If we do not see the vision of the holiness of God and instead only have the fear of hell’s fire, I’m afraid then that Jesus becomes merely a means of escaping this miserable fate. It is because I want my life to be happy. I want paradise. I want heaven. Therefore, I need Jesus. However, I am not really interested in the relationship with the Lord Jesus. I am only interested in the well-being in heaven or paradise. I don’t think this is christianity. Christianity is not about human well-being. It is about seeing the holiness of God. It is about knowing the true God.

If we miss the vision of a holy God, and remain only fearful of God’s punishment, it does not help at all. Many religions also try to deal with divine punishment. There are sacrifices to appease the anger of God. If Christianity also only moves along these tenets, then there is no uniqueness and it is not interesting at all. When you read the book of Lamentations, you see why God becomes angry. It is because Israel has broken the covenant with God. This is about a relationship, not about well-being. Once again quoting puritans, who indeed understand the bible, who say radical things, such as that it is fine to go to hell as long as one still has the relationship with Christ. It is not about heaven and hell, but about being with Christ or Christless. Is that also our religion? Are our lives about political, economic stability? Are our lives about being healthy or sick? Or is it about convenience or inconvenience? Those are not what Christianity is about. It is about being with Christ or without Christ - this is christianity. I am not saying that life does not have economic and political aspects - of course they are there. However, they all come out of our relationship with Christ which will color all the other aspects.

As you read Lamentations, you see they suffered and experienced an exile. They rejected what God said through God’s true prophets. God did not suddenly burst in anger as if it came unpredictably out of nowhere. That was not the case. There were phases that built up towards God’s anger. You can read about rejection of prophets sent by God in verse 9:

Her gates have sunk into the ground; he has ruined and broken her bars; her king and princes are among the nations; the law is no more, and her prophets find no vision from the LORD.

There was no more law, as if God allowed them to be in the state of lawlessness. There were prophets, but they found no vision or revelation from God. God did not reveal to them anymore. God stopped speaking to them. It is frightening if God becomes silent. It is even more frightening when God becomes silent and man does not realize that God is being silent. In our family, there could be one person who is so angry that he or she does not say anything, yet we do not sense his or her silence. God is sometimes silent, so we should better be aware when God is silent. God is not always silent and is not supposed to be silent. God is God who gives His Word and speaks. We are more blessed if we hear God’s words of rebuke than if we do not hear anything from God. In some cultures people may think silence means consent. This is not always the case. People think that if one disagrees, then he or she should speak out, so silence means consent. We then project this paradigm to God and say that if God is silent, He agrees. No news means good news? No vision or revelation means good news? You read here that the prophets found no vision. God did not reveal Himself anymore. Verse 14 says:

Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions; they have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes, but have seen for you oracles that are false and misleading.

What do false and deceptive visions mean? The next sentence describes it: to not expose your iniquity. I remember one saying from Rev. Stephen Tong in one of his gospel rallies, ‘How do you know a country is blessed by God? It is when God sends a person to rebuke the country of their sins. If there is no more exposure of iniquity, then maybe God does not bother anymore. Recently a politician in Germany gave a rebuke to the church, saying that the church should not meddle in politics and instead focus on preaching the Word of God. Of course we have to be discerning here. It is not wrong that the church has a responsibility in politics to some extent. However, if the church keeps commenting about politics every week, or even carries out some political agenda, then the church seems to indeed have lost its function. Sometimes political correctness, be it on the left or the right, may imply not exposing iniquities. A distinct characteristic of a prophet truly sent by God is exposing iniquities.

However, this is not popular in our world, who is tired and wants to hear motivational sayings. One may say, ‘From Monday to Friday in office I have been scolded and now on Sunday in church I am scolded again. I need a shoulder to cry on, not more rebukes. Can the church just hug me?’. Of course God not only rebukes but also comforts and consoles. However, the opposite is true: God not only comforts and consoles but also rebukes. Why? The answer is simple: because we still need to be corrected. Living in a world where growth is needed but not wanting to receive any correction does not make any sense. If there is no more correction needed, we have reached perfection. This does not make sense. It is hard to be exposed to our iniquities. However, if you see the works of the true prophets in the Old Testament, and even Jesus Himself, there is exposing of iniquities so that there is true repentance. There is forgiveness in God. There is newness of life in God. This is an invitation towards those, so do not get tired if God keeps inviting us to repentance.

However, the more popular ones are the false prophets with their deceptive visions. They neither expose inequities nor rebuke sins. They are afraid of rebuking sins and offending people. They deliver sugar-coated preaching with sweet words, and the congregation gets spiritual diabetes. People do not grow because of those sweet talks, yet the people seem to enjoy them. In Jakarta, I ministered to the elderly on a monthly basis. I told them to be careful of sweet talks that are actually deceptions, such as ‘O grandpa and grandma, you look younger and younger day by day.’. This is impossible and definitely untrue. The elderly usually feel glad to hear that lie. I told them that those are all nonsense. I am also declining physically. My face is becoming uglier as well. However, we are not happy with such realistic statements. We like deceptions better even if we know we are deceiving ourselves. What is the point of doing this?

We indeed need the grace of God to get true self-knowledge and self-assessment. God sent his true prophets to bring people to true self-knowledge by exposing iniquities. We need to be pulled back to the covenantal relationship with God. If people are moving further away and they are not warned, it is dangerous. It is a blessing if we have moments when God exposes our iniquities. That means we are loved by God. The Israelites kept rejecting the prophets of God. They would rather celebrate the false prophets. Finally they became further and further away from God. They no longer heard rebukes to repair their covenantal relationship with Jehovah.

There is a positive part we can learn from this passage. When the Israelites received the punishment from God, they did not see it as an abuse, but received it from God and acknowledged that they had transgressed the law and commandments of God. They received it as a just and righteous punishment from God. They also prayed for the little ones. You can see this in verse 11:

My eyes are spent with weeping; my stomach churns; my bile is poured out to the ground because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because infants and babies faint in the streets of the city.

It should not be taken for granted that people still remember infants and babies. Sometimes when we parents have a headache, we become impatient with our children. We shout at them and grumble why they cannot sense that we are having a headache. Indeed, when we suffer, we tend to be more self-conscious and self-centered. However, what we see here is that when the Israelites received the punishment from God, they received it as a just punishment they deserved, but they lamented before God and pleaded with God to consider the infants and babies, who were ‘innocent’ as it was the fault of the adults. I long that we become a church like this. A church that is sensitive to the most vulnerable and harmed in society, not a narcissistic church that is very conscious of the suffering it receives. A church that is sensitive to the sufferings of babies and infants. That is a mature church. If we become mature in God, we will grow towards that. We do not really speak about our sacrifice, about us being victimised, etc. Instead, we become more sensitive to the sufferings of others.

Of course there is a risk in doing this. Sometimes we can be abused and manipulated. However, when we attend to the most vulnerable and marginalized, God will also make them grow. We should start with negative thinking that those people will not appreciate the help and instead remain childish. Those people will eventually grow and become people who help others. The problem is more likely that we do not want to help them on the pretext that we want to train them to become mature, while in fact we are just stingy with our help. Living in Europe is indeed tough. There is a saying from BVG, ‘Berlin is hard but lovely (hart aber herzlich), and if you take public transportation, you know what I mean. If you drive cars, maybe you do not understand. Our life may become tough and we become unhelpful. We then look down on people who keep needing help and wonder why they do not become strong. We then justify leaving no more place for the most vulnerable and harmed. However, you see in this part, the Israelites received the punishment from God, yet they could still pray for the weak, represented by infants and babies. They did not talk about their suffering anymore because they deserved it anyway. Instead, they prayed for the next generations to come. We hope that in our lives, we also invest in the future generation.

The elderly have their own struggles. In this church it is rather unique. Previously I was never the oldest person in the church, like in Kelapa Gading, Perth or Singapore. It is only here that I am the oldest. One day you will also be at this stage. It is quite sad to see the elderly who are still very concerned with their own well-being, title, position, power, etc. Are they elderly or children? Being young or old is indeed relative, but if we become mature, we should think more that it is not about ourselves anymore. It is not about me, but about the people who come next. Our time will soon pass. But there are old people who still think of grasping so many things. The message is not that young people are justified in wanting to grasp many things. The point is that the more we become mature, the less we think about ourselves. We start thinking about the next generation. The beauty of this story is that the older generation do not care about themselves anymore and instead think about the next one who would continue their lives, so they prayed for the infants and babies. It is not that we do not appreciate the ministry to the elderly, but you and I should pray about how to minister to more children. We pray to God for more opportunities. I give thanks that among us there are people who are relatively still very young.

Lamentations show the maturity of the Israelites when they received just punishment from God. However, why must God give such a severe punishment? It is not because God is impatient or not slow to anger. Instead, it is because judgment must be passed. A commentary says, ‘Judgment, in this case, stops the generational vicious cycle of self-defeating activity.’. This is a frightening sentence. The self-defeating activity can be handed from one generation to the next and become out of control. If God does not stop it, it will snowball and become unstoppable. Sometimes we read difficult passages in the Old Testament and ask why God must make children, even infants and babies, perish. The story seems so horrible. Sometimes we underestimate the potential of children who can grow to become evil. We think that children are just cute even when they are naughty. We do not view them as creatures who are worshipping idols - this might sound so judgmental. However, perhaps that is the reality but we deny it. There are times when God passes His judgment to stop this generational vicious cycle.

There is a pattern here: God is preparing this nation for entering into a foretaste of and hoping for the glory of Zion. Spiritual revival stories are usually preceded by very difficult situations: darkness, tribulation, instability, etc. From there God gives newness. Jesus came in the context of Israelites who were experiencing a spiritual exile. They were physically no longer in exile, but spiritually they were still in exile. In the Reformation story, Martin Luther was raised by God when the church was in the Babylonian exile. Such a dark world anticipated the coming light from God. Lamentations 1 and 2 created a bridge from the day of the LORD, the judgment day, to the glory of Zion. Isn’t this the pattern of the life of Jesus Christ as well? The cross was very depressing, but it was not the end. There was the resurrection, but it was preceded by the death of Jesus and the depression of the disciples, who seemed to have no hope. As such, do not give up. In the recent retreat, we talked about perseverance. One aspect of it is to persevere to hope. I want to close by quoting a difficult yet beautiful sentence that depicts Lamentations as an act of impatient hope, a hope that cannot be stopped.

‘Speakers in Lamentations tenaciously persist in trying to engage God. They make claims on God, demand attention, and beg for a future. They do this even as God walks away and silently closes the door on them.’

God seemed ‘unfaithful’ but the people remained ‘faithful’. Just like Jesus Christ, who when crucified and forsaken by the Father, said, ‘My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?’. He kept pursuing. The Father had forsaken Jesus on the cross, but Jesus still pleaded to the Father. This relationship that is ever pursuing - this is impatient hope. Let alone God, sometimes even with humans we already give up. God already closed the door and left the Israelites, but they kept pursuing God. This is something we can learn from the Israelites. There were writings from people like Viktor Frankl who were in concentration camps that tell us it is indeed difficult to receive suffering from God. But how did people like Viktor Frankl get meaning of life in that situation that was far from convenient? He found it ironically from persevering to hope when God seemed to have closed the door. God does not really close the door, but it is actually a trial for us whether we still want to pursue Him. This is a holy ambition that keeps pursuing God. The last sentence from the quote says, ‘Even in the face of God’s silence, the speakers persevere.’. Let us have the same perseverance.